LA Dodgers' Tommy Lasorda makes that call

Clifford Rich was a week short of 91 years old. He was a WW2 veteran and a hardworking, nice guy.

He'd also been an Amherst, NY cop for 30 years, then a traffic officer in LA for another 30. He retired at 83. He was an avid Dodgers fan too. A lot of times, he'd told his wife Mary he'd give a week's wages to sit and have a chat with the Dodgers' Tommy Lasorda about baseball.

Last week, it all seemed too late for any dreams to come true. Clifford, in a hospice with cancer spread throughout his body, could no longer even speak. But Tommy got the message somehow and picked up the phone to make what must have been the most difficult, moving call of his life. He gave Clifford the chat he'd so wished for, though Tommy had to maintain the conversation all alone; Clifford could hear and struggled to reply, but couldn't. He was so excited, his daughter said.

A few hours after the call, Clifford passed away. Tommy tried to make light of what he'd done for the dying man, but shouldn't. Talking to someone who is a stranger is hard enough; when they can't reply it's doubly hard. When they are dying, it's an almost impossible task. He pulled it off though, and made the dream of a dying 91-year-old come true, at last.